Mark your calendar for the Rotary Club of Canton's upcoming Semi-Annual Health Screen & Wellness Fair scheduled for Saturday, November 2, 2019, from 7 am - 11 am! The event will once again be held at the Mercy Hall Auditorium located at 1320 Mercy Drive, Canton.

TOPIC: Overview of Stark County Children Services, the services provided, the types of reports we receive, statistics, and information regarding the need for the Children Services Levy on the ballot on November 6th.

ROBERT MYERS, LISW-S

Deputy Director, Children Services

Rob Myers, LISW-S, joined the Children Services Division as Assistant Deputy Director in August 2014 and was promoted to Deputy Director in February 2018. He has a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from the University of Akron, and a Master of Science in Social Administration from Case Western University. Myers is a licensed social worker with supervision designation. He has worked in child welfare since 1990 and has held positions in Adoptions, Foster/Adoption Licensing and Home Studies, Independent Living and Ongoing.

During the October 4, 2019 meeting, President Mark Rojek welcomed the 51 members and 2 guests to the meeting. President Mark asked any member celebrating an October birthday to stand and be recognized. *Thank you to the Krassas Event Center for providing the delicious pumpkin cheesecake for dessert!

Rotarian and Past President Dan Matthews provided the Invocation.

Congratulations to Rotarian Joe Niamtu for having the winning 50/50 ticket worth $50.00. *Joe graciously donated the money back to the Club

Secretary Julia Dick welcomed the following guests to the meeting: Chylece Head (speaker); M'Lissa Schnee (guest of Dennis Dent).

Vice President Mark Clendenin introduced the speaker for the meeting, Chylece Head from the American Cancer Society.

President Mark concluded the meeting with the following announcements:

mark your calendar for the upcoming Semi-Annual Health Screen and Wellness Fair scheduled for Saturday, November 2, 2019. Registration is now open. Please consider taking flyers home with you to help get the word out to the public.

the Rotary meeting scheduled for Friday, October 18th will be an OFFSITE meeting held at the Timken Steel Faircrest. You will need to RSVP your attendance to this meeting ASAP since space is limited and we can only accept the first 45 RSVP's. Deadline date to register is October 11, 2019.

The following will receive a makeup for attending the Nominating Committee meeting on Friday, October 4, 2019: James Boggs, Steve Fettman, President Mark Rojek, Vice President Mark Clendenin, Jeff Scott, Becky Clark, Bruce Hale and President Elect Drew Pelger.

Musa Muhammed Ali, a farmer in Borno state, Nigeria, has had to deal with the many ways polio has affected his life. For instance, he used to have to pay for transportation when he needed to buy feed for his animals. But after receiving a hand-operated tricycle funded through Rotary’s PolioPlus grants, Ali (pictured above) can now spend that money on other necessities. His life was changed by the “plus” in PolioPlus.

When we talk about PolioPlus, we know we are eradicating polio, but do we realize how many added benefits the program brings? The “plus” is something else that is provided as a part of the polio eradication campaign. It might be a hand-operated tricycle or access to water. It might be additional medical treatment, bed nets, or soap. A 2010 study estimates that vitamin A drops given to children at the same time as the polio vaccine have prevented 1.25 million deaths by decreasing susceptibility to infectious diseases.

Below, we take you to Nigeria, which could soon be declared free of wild poliovirus, to show you some of the many ways the polio eradication campaign is improving lives.

PREVENTING DISEASE

Polio vaccination campaigns are difficult to carry out in northern Nigeria, where the Boko Haram insurgency has displaced millions of people, leading to malnutrition and spikes in disease. When security allows, health workers diligently work to bring the polio vaccine and other health services to every child, including going tent to tent in camps for displaced people. Here, health workers are in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno, where the insurgency began 10 years ago.

Rotary and its partners also distribute soap and organize health camps to treat other conditions. “The pluses vary from one area to another. Depending on the environment and what is seen as a need, we try to bridge the gap,” says Tunji Funsho, chair of Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee.

(Please click link below for more content on "Preventing Disease")

PROVIDING CLEAN WATER

Addressing a critical long-term need such as access to clean water helps build relationships and trust with community members. Within camps for displaced people, vaccinators are sometimes met with frustration. “People say, ‘We don’t have water, and you’re giving us polio drops,’” Tunji Funsho explains. Rotary and its partners responded by funding 31 solar-powered boreholes to provide clean water in northern Nigeria, and the effort is ongoing. At left, women and children collect water from a borehole in the Madinatu settlement, where about 5,000 displaced people live.

Supplying clean water to vulnerable communities is a priority of the PolioPlus program not only in Nigeria, but also in Afghanistan and Pakistan — the only other remaining polio-endemic nations, or countries where transmission of the virus has never been interrupted.

(Please click the link below for more content on "Providing Clean Water")

CREATING JOBS

Polio left Isiaku Musa Maaji disabled, with few ways to make a living. At age 24, he learned to build hand-operated tricycles designed to provide mobility for disabled adults and children, and later started his own business assembling them. His first break came, he says, when a local government placed a trial order. It was impressed with his product, and the orders continued. Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee recently ordered 150 tricycles from Maaji to distribute to polio survivors and others with mobility problems. The relationship he has built with local Rotarians has motivated him to take part in door-to-door polio vaccination campaigns.

“It is not easy to be physically challenged,” he says. “I go out to educate other people on the importance of polio vaccine because I don’t want any other person to fall victim to polio.”

(Please click the link below for more content on "Creating Jobs")

IMPROVING HEALTH CARE

In Maiduguri, Falmata Mustapha rides a hand-operated tricycle donated to her by Rotary’s Nigeria PolioPlus Committee. She is joined by several health workers for a door-to-door immunization campaign, bringing polio drops to areas without basic health care. UNICEF data show that polio survivors like Mustapha have a remarkable success rate persuading reluctant parents to vaccinate their children — on average, survivors convince seven of every 10 parents they talk to. In places where misinformation and rumors have left people hesitant to vaccinate, the survivors’ role in the final phase of the eradication effort is critical.

“Since working with the team, I have seen an increase in immunization compliance in the community,” Mustapha says. “I am well-regarded in the community because of my work, and I am happy about this.”

Eighteen million people around the world who would have died or been paralyzed are alive and walking because of the polio eradication campaign. Health workers and volunteers supported by PolioPlus grants have built an infrastructure for delivering health care and collecting data that, in many parts of the world, didn’t exist before. It’s already being used to improve overall health care and to fight other diseases, proving that the legacy of PolioPlus is more than eradicating a deadly disease from the planet — it’s also building a stronger health system that provides better access to lifesaving interventions for the world’s most vulnerable children.